Growth of Engineering Education in India: Status, Issues and Challenges

Article Growth of Engineering Education in India: Status, Issues and Challenges Higher Education for the Future 3(1) 93 107 2016 The Kerala State Higher Education Council SAGE Publications sagepub.in/home.nav DOI: 10.1177/2347631115610223 http://hef.sagepub.com Pradeep Kumar Choudhury 1 Abstract This article examines the growth of engineering education in India in the posteconomic reform period using the secondary data published by Ministry of Human Resource Development, University Grants Commission and All India Council for Technical Education. Particularly, this article has focused on three important dimensions of engineering and technical education in India institutional expansion, enrolment pattern and public financing. It finds that there has been a massive expansion of both institutions and enrolment in engineering education in India during the post-liberalization period, and this expansion has apparently taken place in the private sector. Also, as expected, the enrolment in engineering education has increased fast compared to other disciplines and overall enrolment growth of higher education. However, this massive expansion of engineering education has not been able to provide access to the disadvantaged groups, namely women, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The study also reveals that the public expenditure on engineering education has not increased at par with the increase in enrolment in this sector, which has resulted in the decline in per student public expenditure. The issues and concerns discussed in this article have brought up some promising avenues for future research in this area. Keywords Engineering education, institutional expansion, private sector, public financing, India Introduction The Indian higher education sector has undergone massive expansion, though not uniformly, during the six and half decades following independence. There were only 0.26 million students in higher education in 750 colleges and 30 universities 1 Assistant Professor, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Corresponding author: Pradeep Kumar Choudhury, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. E-mails: pradeep.hcu@gmail.com; pradeepchoudhury@mail.jnu.ac.in

94 Higher Education for the Future 3(1) in India in 1950 1951. This has increased to about 20.29 million students in 35.5 thousand colleges and 700 universities in 2012 2013. The gross enrolment rate has increased almost 50 times from 0.4 per cent to 19 per cent between 1950 1951 and 2012 2013 (UGC, 2013). With this, India has grown into one of the largest systems of higher education in the world. Among those students enrolled in higher education, about 80 per cent belong to three disciplines, namely arts (42 per cent), science (19 per cent) and commerce (18 per cent), and the remaining 20 per cent are in the professional courses such as education, engineering and technology, medicine, agriculture, veterinary sciences and law. Of the 20 per cent enrolment rate in professional courses, engineering and technology accounted for 10 per cent in 2009 2010 (UGC, 2010). Furthermore, during 1991 2011, the number of institutions of higher education (including all disciplines) in India has increased at the rate of 8 per cent, whereas the number of institutions of engineering education has gone up at the rate of 15 per cent (Government of India, 1991, 2011). Similarly, enrolment in engineering colleges increased sevenfold, whereas it increased only threefold in overall higher education during the same period (UGC, 1991, 2010). There is hardly any attempt to analyze and discuss the growth of engineering education in terms of institutional expansion and enrolment capacity required to get an overall picture of this discipline. Also, within the last six and half decades of expansion of engineering education in India, a number of issues such as regional disparities in the growth of institutions, uneven access by gender and social groups, and public financing of engineering and technical education have come up in a serious way and demand for a detailed discussion. In this context, this article has analyzed the growth and status of engineering education in India using the data collected from the publications of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) (Selected Educational Statistics, Statistics of Higher and Technical Education in India, Analysis of Budget Expenditure on Education), University Grants Commission (UGC) (Higher Education in India at a Glance, Annual Reports) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). The rest of the article is organized as follows: the second section examines the growth pattern of engineering education in India in terms of the expansion of institutions and enrolment. The issues focused in this section include private sector participation in engineering education, the regional imbalance in the growth of institutions and the variation in the access to engineering education by gender and social groups. The trends and patterns of public expenditure on technical and engineering education are discussed in the third section. Some potential areas for future research are highlighted in the conclusion. Growth of Engineering Institutions and Enrolments in India: Issues and Challenges In 1847, the first engineering college was established in Roorkee named Thomson Engineering College to train civil engineers. However, the first formal school for engineering was set up in Guindy, Madras, in 1842, which was attached to the

Choudhury 95 Gun Carriage Factory. At the end of nineteenth century, the technical education in India consisted of only four engineering colleges at the degree level, about 20 survey and technical institutes and about 50 industrial schools (Government of India, 2004). The Sarkar Committee, appointed by Government of India in 1945, recommended the establishment of higher technical institutes based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the four regions of India, which has resulted in the setting up of the five Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) at Kharagpur (1950), Bombay (1958), Kanpur (1959), Madras (1960) and Delhi (1961) (Delhi was added on to the original four). Afterwards, the increasing demand for engineering education has resulted in the establishment of a large number of institutions in India. There were only 242 degree-level engineering institutions in the country in 1985 1986 with a total intake capacity of 0.17 million, which has increased to 3,346 institutions with more than 3.69 million intakes in the year 2013 2014. In this period, higher education institutions (HEIs) in India has increased from 5,427 to 40,373 which amounts to an annual average growth rate of 7.43 per cent, whereas engineering education institutions have increased by about 10 per cent per annum. Also, within three decades, the share of engineering enrolment to total higher education enrolment in India has increased from 3.42 to 15.55 per cent (Table 1). The overwhelming increase in the higher education institutions (particularly after the post-liberalization period) is mainly due to the intervention of the private Table 1. Growth of Engineering Institutions and Enrolment in India Year Higher Education Institutions Engineering Education Share (Per cent) Higher Education ( 1,000) Enrolment Engineering Education ( 1,000) Share (Per cent) 1985 1986 5,427 242 4.46 3,605.02 176.54 3.42 1990 1991 6,323 277 4.38 4,924.87 216.84 3.30 1995 1996 8,188 355 4.34 6,574.00 315.72 2.84 2000 2001 11,568 678 5.86 8,399.44 529.47 3.05 2005 2006 20,769 1,562 7.52 11,028.02 795.12 7.20 2009 2010 26,334 2,894 10.99 17,295.08 2,005.56 11.59 2013 2014 40,373 3,346* 8.28 23,764.96 3,696.10 15.55 Growth Rate (1985 1986 to 2013 2014) 7.43 9.83 6.97 11.47 Source: Selected Educational Statistics (various years), Statistics of Higher and Technical Education 2009 2010, UGC Annual Report 2013 2014 and AICTE Annual Report 2011 2012. Notes: *Taken from AICTE Annual Report 2011 2012 (the latest available year) and the data are as on 31 March 2012. Total higher education institutions include colleges for general education, colleges for professional education (engineering, technical, architecture, medical, education and other colleges), central and state universities, deemed to be universities and institutions of national importance.

96 Higher Education for the Future 3(1) sector (Agarwal, 2006). Considering the inability of the government to invest further in technical education, and given the growing demand for engineering graduates, opening up of institutions became an inevitable choice. After the 1980s, many state governments encouraged private entrepreneurs to set up self-financed professional colleges, without any financial support, except providing land and other infrastructural supports at subsidized rates (Blom & Cheong, 2010). Although the private partnership in technical education in India began with the establishment of the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore in 1906 and later Birla Institute of Technology at Ranchi (1955) and Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences at Pilani (1964), the rapid expansion took place soon after the advent of liberalization of Indian economy in 1991 (Chopra & Sharma, 2010). The enrolment in undergraduate programmes of self-financing private institutions was 90 per cent whereas it was less than 4 per cent in premier technical institutions such as IITs and National Institutes of Technology (NITs) in 2007. During 1997 2007, the students intake has increased with the growth rate of 19 per cent, which is mainly due to the setting up of new institutions in the private sector; the growth rate of private engineering institutions was 13 per cent during this period (Banerjee & Muley, 2008). Interestingly, more than half of the total private engineering institutions (51.17 per cent) in the country are in the southern region alone, with an intake capacity of 53.5 per cent (Table 2). On the other hand, only about 6 per cent of the total private institutions are in the eastern region. Thus, the expansion of the private sector in engineering education is largely concentrated in the southern region. There is a significant change in the character of private partners in higher and technical education in India. In the 1950s and the 1960s, people with some money used to donate their money to public institutions or set up philanthropy-based private schools and colleges; today, though, those with even a small fraction of that money prefer to set up a private, self-financing college or university (Tilak, 2014, p. 35). The investment in higher education institutions is found to be the most rewarding, yielding quick and very high pay-offs, with minimum risk. Table 2. Region- and Management-wise Number of Technical Institutions and Intakes in India (2006 2007) Regions Institutions (Per cent) Intake (Per cent) Government Share Private Share Government Share Private Share Southern 30.30 51.17 24.91 53.50 Northern 15.15 10.29 11.93 9.63 Eastern 13.33 5.81 9.14 6.04 Western 7.88 10.29 10.43 9.62 Central 19.39 10.29 21.15 9.87 Northwest 13.94 12.15 22.43 11.34 India 100 100 100 100 Source: Author s calculation from the available information from AICTE website (accessed on 13 December 2011).

Choudhury 97 The philanthropy and charity motives of investing in higher education have been replaced with profit and commercial interests. Whereas the earlier involvement of different technical institutions in the country was with educational and cultural motives, the recent establishments of private engineering institutions are strictly commercial. There has been a phenomenal growth of profit-oriented commercial institutions in India after the 1990s, compared to the philanthropy-based private institutions of the past. Many private institutions in technical and engineering education though described de jure as charitable or not-for-profit institutions, are de facto profit-making institutions (Tilak, 2012). These institutions have largely contributed to vulgar forms of commercialization in technical education in India. After the 1990s, there has been a significant change in the character of private partners in technical education and particularly in engineering education, which has been discussed in detail by Anandakrishnan (2006). It is highlighted that the majority of privately funded and managed engineering institutions are engaged in malpractices such as collecting exorbitant capitation fees and other institutional fees, manipulation of entrance results and admission processes, such as disregarding admission norms in favour of those willing to pay more. Also, these commercial institutions operating in higher education work as satellite institutions of foreign universities. Further, several national-level studies in India (Biswas, Chopra, Jha & Singh, 2010; Kumar, Sengupta & Vij, 2005; Rao, 2006) have established that the unregulated and unbalanced growth of the private sector in engineering education has resulted in the decline in the quality of teaching and learning imparted in these institutions. The studies have addressed the issues such as the lack of adequate and qualified faculty, weak industry academia interaction, outdated curricula and the absence of a strong quality assurance structure in the larger context of the quality of engineering and technical education in the country. The report of the high power committee for faculty development in technical institutions of AICTE (2006) estimates that the available number of faculty with PhD in engineering and technology is 6,829 against a requirement of 36,963 in 2006. The report has highlighted the fact that private institutions do not attach sufficient value to the necessity of having competent teachers and are inclined to satisfying merely the numbers and not the capabilities to adequately meet the challenging requirements of the academic programmes. Interestingly, a recent study by the open data campaigner Rakesh Reddy Dubbudu and his team has found that engineering colleges share faculty members to meet official norms. Official data from eight major States (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh) shows that over 90 per cent of engineering colleges have at least one teacher whose name also features on the rolls of another college, and there are at least 50,000 such duplicate teachers (The Hindu, 2015). This is a serious issue that needs to be considered by AICTE, the apex body of the Government of India for planning and coordination of technical education. The regional imbalance continues to be a major issue despite expansion of higher education in India in recent years even though it was seriously noted in the National Policy on Education (Government of India, 1986, p. 6), which states that in higher education in general and technical education in particular, steps will be

98 Higher Education for the Future 3(1) taken to facilitate inter-regional mobility by providing equal access to every Indian of requisite merit, regardless of his origins. Not much change is visible in the regional pattern of establishing HEIs (particularly, in technical education). Around two-thirds of India s engineering institutions at the undergraduate level are located in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra though they account for less than one-third of the total population of the country. The southern region alone has almost half of the total engineering institutions, whereas the eastern region has only about 7 per cent (See Figure 1). 1 There are around 1,551 degreelevel engineering institutions in the southern region, consisting of four states Andhra Pradesh including Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and a union territory Pondicherry, whereas there are only 221 institutions in the eastern region that includes the union territory Andaman & Nicobar Islands and the states Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Jharkhand, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Odisha, Sikkim, Tripura and West Bengal. At the extreme end of the spectrum, Mizoram, Nagaland and Daman and Diu have no engineering institutions. The region-wise students intake also reveals more or less a similar pattern for the year 2012. The four southern states and union territory account for 49.34 per cent of the total intake in degree-level engineering institutions, whereas the eastern region has only about 6 per cent of the total intake in degree-level engineering education in India. The other four regions (northern, western, central, northwest) have also more or less 10 per cent of the total intake each. The state of Tamil Nadu has the highest sanctioned intake of 19 per 10,000 of its population, whereas the large states such as Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have three and six intakes per 10,000 of their population, respectively (Chopra & Sharma, 2010). At national Western 13.69 Northern 11.39 Southern 46.35 North-West 10.58 Eastern 6.60 Central 11.39 Figure 1. Region-wise Distributions of Degree-level Engineering Institutions in India as on 31 March 2012, the Latest Available Data by AICTE Source: Author s calculation from the Annual Report 2011 2012 the latest in series, AICTE.

Choudhury 99 level, an average of 350 students per 1,000,000 people enter into technical degree programmes; in the south, the figure is 1,047; southwest 689; west 486; east 131 and in the north, just 102. The lack of regulation and planning by the AICTE has allowed for geographical pockets of oversupply and undersupply in technical manpower in different regions of the country (WENR, 2007). The statistics in Figure 1 clearly show the glaring regional imbalance that exists in the field of engineering education in India. Engineering and technical education in India has been highly selective in terms of providing social access to the disadvantaged sections of the society such as SCs, STs and women (Rao, 2006). Although there has been a phenomenal growth in the enrolment of female students in higher education in India, their share to the total enrolment still lags behind that of their male counterparts. The gross enrolment ratio in higher education among girls was 12.7 per cent against 17 per cent for males in 2009 2010 (Government of India, 2011). Of the total enrolment of 170 million students in higher education in India in 2009 2010, 40.2 per cent were women and their share was 28.7 per cent in engineering education (Table 3). Gender-wise enrolment in different disciplines of higher education in India provides some useful insights. In arts discipline (particularly in the subject of education ), there is heaviest concentration of women, whereas in some other disciplines such as engineering and technology, the share has been simply marginal. The Gender Parity Index 2 (GPI) in engineering education was 0.3, which is much less than the higher education, that is, 0.74, in 2009 2010 (Statistics of Higher and Technical Education 2009 2010, Government of India). Quite a few studies have found that professional education is, by and large, dominated by males whereas in general education females constitute a larger proportion (Ghuman, Singh & Brar, 2009; Salim, 2008). Often, it is argued that engineering and technical education is a masculine domain and hence out of reach for women. Those who support this line of argument point to the Table 3. Women Enrolment in Higher and Engineering Education in India Year Higher Education Engineering Education Total Per cent Share Total Per cent Share 1980 1981 748,525 14.35 4,949 3.83 1985 1986 1,067,484 24.53 12,182 6.90 1990 1991 1,436,887 27.19 17,130 7.89 1995 1996 2,191,138 29.61 26,368 8.35 2000 2001 3,012,367 32.47 109,069 20.59 2005 2006 4,466,348 34.10 185,800 23.36 2010 2011 7,048,000 41.50 800,680 24.54 2013 2014 10,552,449 44.40 992,765 24.84 CAGR 1980 1981 to 2013 2014 8.34 17.43 Source: Selected Educational Statistics (various years), Statistics of Higher and Technical Education 2009 2010, UGC Annual Reports (various years).

100 Higher Education for the Future 3(1) perseverance of certain social myths such as women are emotional, while technology is strictly logical and hence, both do not go together. There is also a view that men are good at mathematics and machines, whereas women have no clue about these (Rao, 2007, p. 187). The improvement in the participation of women in engineering education (3.8 per cent in 1980 1981 to 24.84 per cent in 2013 2014) perhaps reveals the gradual interest of women in this discipline. There exists a wide disparity in the access to higher education by different social groups in India. In 2009 2010, the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education was about 15 per cent at overall levels, whereas it was 9 per cent among SCs and 10.3 per cent among STs (Government of India, 2011). Engineering and technical education in India has been highly selective in terms of providing access to these disadvantaged groups. The percentage of SC enrolment in the engineering education was 16.1 per cent in 2006 2007, which was merely 3.6 per cent in 1985 1986. Similarly, the enrolment share of STs in engineering education in India has increased from less than 1 per cent to 5.6 per cent in the period of 20 years (Table 4). The study by Ghuman et al. (2009) using the primary survey data of 2,085 students in rural Punjab found that as high as three-fourth of total students from rural set-up studying in different professional education programmes belonged to forward castes. Professional education in India is nearly inaccessible to the students belonging to backward social groups. Furthermore, the access to higher education among females belonging to different disadvantaged social groups (doubly disadvantaged being women and belonging to SC/ST) appeared to be worse than that of the females belonging to forward castes. For example, women enrolment constituted 36 per cent in the total enrolment in higher education among SCs and STs, whereas it was 40 per cent among the general population in 2009 2010 (Government of India, 2011). Also, the representation of females in engineering education from these two social groups is quite low. Only about 4 per cent of SC females and 1.5 per cent of ST females are accessing engineering education (Table 4). Therefore, even after six and half decades of independence, equitable access to educational opportunities in general and higher professional education in particular has remained a major challenge in India. Table 4. SC and ST Enrolment in Engineering Education in India Year SC SC Female ST ST Female 1985 1986 3.68 0.21 0.98 0.03 1990 1991 6.36 0.67 1.19 0.08 1995 1996 6.68 1.14 1.79 0.18 2000 2001 6.90 1.67 2.59 0.33 2006 2007 16.18 4.23 5.64 1.58 Source: Selected Educational Statistics (various years), MHRD, Government of India. Note: After 2006 2007 the discipline-wise SC/ST enrolment data are not published in Selected Educational Statistic and also in All India Survey on Higher Education, both published by MHRD, Government of India. However, the enrolment of SC/ST in the overall higher education is not provided. The SC/ST enrolment figure by discipline is also provided by UGC in its Annual Report.

Choudhury 101 Public Financing of Engineering and Technical Education in India The development of the social sector, especially education, depends largely on public funding. Further, the public good, at least the quasi-public good nature of education, has laid due emphasis on the public support to it. It is argued that the beneficiaries of technical education are not only the students but also the industry, the government and the society at large, and therefore, the financial inputs to technical education system are to be viewed as a long-term investment in the national economy and the cost of such education has to be shared by all the beneficiaries and in particular by the government (AICTE, 1994). Considering this, this section analyzes public support towards engineering and technical education in India with the help of secondary data obtained from Analysis of Budget Expenditure on Education (ABEE), MHRD, Government of India. The data on public expenditure in higher and technical education in ABEE are provided in two separate statements: (a) university and other higher education and (b) technical education. The public expenditure in engineering education is included as a sub-head/programme in the statement of technical education. Further, the data provided in this on engineering education are partial in nature as they include only the expenditure made by the government on engineering colleges and institutions and do not include the expenditures made by the government in the IITs and NITs. Taking these limitations into account, this section shows the trend and pattern of public expenditure on higher, technical and engineering education in India in the post-economic reform period. In the early 1960s, public funding and philanthropic contributions to higher education were the major part of the resource to this sector in India, and the funding from private sources in terms of fees and other payments from students was negligible. With the implementation of new economic policy of 1991, broadly known as the structural adjustment programme, the trend shifted towards private funding of higher education in general and engineering education in particular, which has been reflected in the weak public support in the post-economic reform era. The public expenditure on engineering colleges in India in real terms (adjusted in 2004 2005 prices) has increased only by 2.1 times (from `s 2,292.7 million to `4,970.7 million), during 1991 1992 to 2010 2011, whereas the enrolment in this period has gone up by almost three times. 3 Interestingly, the share of public expenditure on engineering colleges and institutions to total public expenditure on technical education in India has declined from 20.8 per cent in 1991 1992 to 6.35 per cent in 2010 2011. Similarly, the per student public expenditure on engineering education in real terms in India has come down from `10,147 to as low as `1,523 during this period with a negative annual average growth of 9.5 per cent (Table 5). 4 This is perhaps reflected in the mushrooming of private engineering institutions in the country lower public expenditure towards engineering education associated with higher demand has opened the door for the private sector to grow. Also, the 10 per cent increase in the public expenditure on technical education during 1991 1992 to 2010 2011 was largely due to the funding premier of technical institutes such as IITs and NITs.

102 Higher Education for the Future 3(1) Table 5. Public Expenditure on Engineering and Technical Education in India in Real Terms (2004 2005 prices) Year Technical Education (TE) (` in 1,000) Engineering Education (EE) (` in 1,000) Per cent Share (EE to TE) Per Student Expenditure on Engineering Education (`) 1991 1992 11,008,659 2,292,799 20.83 10,147.60 1995 1996 20,047,326 2,283,813 11.39 7,233.67 2000 2001 29,720,471 3,238,361 10.90 6,116.24 2005 2006 35,082,412 4,280,346 12.20 5,383.27 2009 2010 68,986,959 4,377,747 6.35 2,897.71 2010 2011 72,430,216 4,970,039 6.86 1,523.81 Growth rate (1991 1992 to 2010 2011) 10.42 4.16 9.50 Source: Author s calculation based on the data from ABEE (various years), Selected Educational Statistics (various years), UGC Annual Reports (various years). Several studies, particularly in the international context, have found that the probability of enrolling and continuing in higher education increases with the availability of financial assistance to the students (Glocker, 2011; Monks, 2009; Moore, Studemund & Slobko, 1991; Schwartz, 1985). Also, the National Policy on Education (Government of India, 1986) and National Knowledge Commission (Government of India, 2007) had recommended for a well-funded and extensive National Scholarship Scheme, for the access and retention of socially and economically underprivileged students. The need for financial assistance is strongly felt for the students who are joining the technical education as it is an expensive discipline. Although in the recent year (2010 2011, the latest available data) the share of expenditure on scholarships out of total expenditure on technical education has crossed 1 per cent, it was quite low till this period. In real terms, the per student expenditure on scholarships in technical education in India has gone up from `232 to `332, which is mainly due to the substantial improvement in the funding in 2009 2010 and 2010 2011. It is important to mention here that for the calculation of per student public expenditure on scholarship item of technical education, the total amount of public expenditure incurred on scholarship head was divided by the total enrolment in engineering education in India. However, engineering education is a major area of study in technical education though it includes other areas such as management, pharmacy, hotel management and catering technology, and applied arts and crafts. It is interesting to note that even though the overall public expenditure on the scholarship item of technical education has increased about 17 per cent per annum, the annual average growth of per student expenditure on scholarships is less than two per cent (Table 6). This reveals that the public spending on the scholarship item of technical education does not go with the enrolment growth that works as a major hindrance for promoting equity in higher education, as a large proportion of scholarships are meant for weaker sections.

Choudhury 103 Table 6. Public Expenditure on Scholarships in Technical Education in India in Real Terms (2004 2005 Prices) Year Total Expenditure on TE (`) Expenditure on Scholarship Item of TE (`) Per cent Share Per Student Expenditure on Scholarship (`) 1991 1992 11,008,659 52,556 0.48 232.61 1995 1996 20,047,326 28,622 0.14 90.65 2000 2001 29,720,471 42,364 0.14 80.01 2005 2006 35,082,412 80,539 0.23 101.29 2009 2010 68,986,959 1,031,127 1.49 682.52 2010 2011 72,430,216 1,083,140 1.50 332.09 Growth Rate (1991 1992 to 2010 2011) 10.42 17.26 1.89 Source: Author s calculation based on the data from ABEE (various years), Selected Educational Statistics (various years), UGC Annual Reports (various years). Conclusion There has been a massive expansion of both institutions and enrolment in engineering education in India during the post-liberalization period. The share of engineering enrolment to total enrolment in higher education in India increased from 5 per cent in 1985 1986 to 10 per cent in 2009 2010. The enrolment in higher education in India went up by four times, whereas in engineering education it increased by nine times during this period. The statistics show that the expansion of the number of institutions in engineering education has apparently taken place in the private sector, as their share was more than 90 per cent in the year 2006 2007. The advent of liberalization and privatization of the economy provided increased growth for the nation s economy and thus prompted private initiative to accelerate the pace of engineering education in India. However, the motive in the involvement of the private sector in higher education and particularly in engineering and technical education has changed from philanthropy to profit with the advent of new liberal market policies. With the current pro-private policies and programmes, the technical education sector in India is drastically being transformed into a commercial business activity. Although the government has often cautioned the private sector not to commercialize the educational services provided by them, it is being neglected. We find some fundamental mistakes with the government s encouragement for privatization and regulation towards commercialization. Privatization and commercialization of technical education being two sides of the same coin, it is difficult to distinguish between these two either theoretically or empirically. Both are based on the same principle of making and maximizing profits, and thus, the privatization will ultimately lead to commercialization. Therefore, emphasis should be laid on the larger involvement of the public sector in technical education and also in regulating the expansion of the private sector.

104 Higher Education for the Future 3(1) Even with an overwhelming growth of engineering education in recent years, there however, exist glaring regional imbalances. Around two-thirds of India s engineering institutions at the undergraduate level are located in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra even though they account for less than one-third of the total population of the country. The southern region has almost half of the total engineering institutions, whereas the eastern region has less than 10 per cent. The regional disparity in the educational opportunities would not get removed if left entirely to the market forces, and therefore, there is an urgent need for state interventions to promote the location of new institutions in educationally deprived regions. Also, there is unequal access of engineering education to the different disadvantaged groups, namely women, SCs and STs. The exclusion of these groups is creating inequity in the growth and development of engineering and technical education of our country. The public expenditure on engineering education has not increased at par with the increase in enrolment in this sector, which has resulted in the decline in per student public expenditure. The growth of per student public expenditure on engineering education at constant prices shows a negative trend. This is reflected in the mushrooming of private engineering institutions and declining of quality of engineering education in the country. A significant growth in public finances is critically needed for quantitative expansion, for improvement in quality and excellence and for enhancing equity in engineering education. This study is an important contribution to our understanding of the growth of engineering education in India in the post 1990s. The issues and concerns discussed in this article have brought up some promising avenues for future research in this endeavour. These may include, among others, examining the regional pattern of the growth of private engineering institutions in India, and its further consequences on access, equity and quality. Although we have a common understanding that the phenomenal growth in the intake and in the number of institutions in the private sector has resulted the degradation of quality, there is a need to study these in detail. There is also a need for comparative studies to find out if these results can be generalized in other fields of technical and professional education such as management, law and medicine, as this study is only limited to engineering education. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Professor Jandhyala B. G. Tilak for his guidance to write this article. He also thanks the two anonymous reviewers of the journal for their useful comments to improve the quality of this article. However, the findings, interpretation and conclusions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the institute the author is working with. Notes 1. AICTE has classified all the states into seven regions, where the central region consists of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat; the eastern region consists of Mizoram, Sikkim, Odisha, West Bengal, Tripura, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar, Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Jharkhand; the northern region includes Bihar,

Choudhury 105 Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand; the northwest region includes Chandigarh, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, New Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh; the southern region includes Andhra Pradesh including Telangana, Pondicherry and Tamil Nadu; the southwest region includes Karnataka and Kerala; the western region includes Maharashtra, Goa, Daman and Diu and Dadar Nagar Heveli. The southern and southwest regions are together considered as the southern region here. 2. GPI (as defined by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics) refers to the ratio of female to male values of a given indicator. A GPI equal to 1 indicates parity between females and males. In general, a value of less than 1 indicates disparity in favour of boys/men and a value of greater than 1 indicates disparity in favour of girls/women. However, the interpretation should be the other way round for indicators that should ideally approach 0 per cent (e.g., repetition, dropout, illiteracy rates, etc.). In these cases, a GPI of less than 1 indicates a disparity in favour of girls/women and a value of greater than 1 indicates a disparity in favour of boys/men. 3. Expenditure in real terms/constant prices is estimated by using the gross domestic product (GDP) deflator. This has been calculated by considering the 2004 2005 as base year price from the GDP at market price collected from the Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy (2013 2014), Reserve Bank of India. 4. Per student public expenditure on engineering education = Total public expenditure on engineering colleges and institutions/number of students enrolled in engineering education. References Agarwal, P. (2006). Higher education in India: The need for change (Working Paper No. 180). New Delhi: Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). AICTE. (1994). Report of the High Power Committee for Mobilisation of Additional Resources for Technical Education. New Delhi: Author.. (2006). Report of High Power Committee for Faculty Development in Technical Institutions. New Delhi: AICTE. Anandakrishnan, M. (2006). Privatization of higher education: Opportunities and anomalies. Paper presented at the National Seminar on privatization and Commercialization of Higher Education. New Delhi: National University of Educational Planning and Administration. Banerjee, R., & Muley V.P. (2008). Engineering education in India. Draft Report, Observer Research Foundation, Mumbai. Biswas, G., Chopra K.L., Jha C.S., & Singh D.V. (2010). Profile of engineering education in India: Status, concerns and recommendations. New Delhi: Norosa Publishing House. Blom, A., & Cheong, J. (2010). Governance of technical education in India: Key issues, principles, and case studies (Working Paper No. 190). Washington, DC: World Bank. Chopra, K.L., & Sharma, P.B. (2010). Higher technical education in India Profile of growth and future perspectives. Asian Development Bank Regional Technical Assistance Project. Retrieved 10 April 2013, from http://www.namstct.org/adb_ RETA_Report/Prof_KL_Chopra_Prof_PB_Sharma.pdf Ghuman, R.S., Singh, S., & Brar J.S. (2009). Professional education in Punjab: Exclusion of rural students. Patiala: Publication Bureau, Punjabi University. Glocker, D. (2011). The effect of student aid on the duration of study. Economics of Education Review, 30(1), 177 190.

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Choudhury 107 WENR: World Education News and Reviews. (2007). Engineering education in India: A story of contrasts. Retrieved 25 August 2008, from http://www.wes.org/ewenr/07jan/ feature.htm Author s bio-sketch Pradeep Kumar Choudhury is currently working as an assistant professor at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has completed his PhD from the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) and masters in economics from the University of Hyderabad. His research interest includes economics and financing of education, educational inequality, health and education and applied econometrics.